


Waiting for the Wyrm

by Senri



Category: big... dumb dragon - pocketss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senri/pseuds/Senri
Summary: On the eve of a celebration in the Great Wyrm's honor, a disaffected worshipper has a vision of the Wyrm.
Relationships: Great Wyrm & Their Followers (big dumb dragon - pocketss)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Waiting for the Wyrm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).



Another year in the cult, another big push getting ready for the Day of the Great Unraveling ceremony. Bettiana was _so_ over it. She had been over the cult at the age of eight, when her parents went all in and she joined the cult schooling program (dark rituals, Latin, and augury-reading were on the curriculum). She had been over it when Dark Sister Laura tried to tell her that what were clearly Cheerios were actually wrought in the image of the Great Wyrm eating his own tail, a secret symbol alluding to his dominance over reality, his presence before it began, his preeminence after he ended it.

“This is so lame,” she muttered to Esme, as they both sat on the floor of the cult’s dilapidated gymnasium, paper-macheing together the long-slung skull of the Great Wyrm. “The Day of the Great Unraveling isn’t even fun.”

“You’re so, like, negative, Bettiana. Doesn’t it get boring?”

“The Order of the Great Wyrm wants to bring forth doomsday, Esme.”

“So?”

“So, being a little negative isn’t, like, outside of our whole aesthetic.”

“Just because we’re encouraging the apocalypse, I don’t see why we can’t have a good time.” Esme was infuriatingly cheerful about it all, maybe because her parents had been inducted into the Order of the Great Wyrm when Esme was a lot younger than Bettiana had been. Under Esme’s capable hands, the model of the Great Wyrm’s upper skull plate took on an infernal life of its own. Esme had been the one to suggest making the eyes out of green cellophane and fixing LEDS behind them, LEDs that could be activated with the push of a button fixed to the underside of the skull (which would be invisible when they all paraded around carrying the front skull plate and draped in black sheets, enacting their part as the Great Wyrm in the pageant). She had fun with this sort of thing and was a shoo-in for Ritual Leader once they turned eighteen. But Esme wasn’t as insufferable as -

“Is the face plate _done_ yet?”

“Almost, Chlorba-reek!” Esme chirped. Chlorba-reek put her hands on her hips and glared around at the working crowd. Chlorba-reek was so dedicated to the Great Wyrm, she’d stopped going by Tiffany entirely and only went by her cult name. Bettiana thought that Infernal Speech sounded like belches and would rather have died.

“Pick it up, folks! Our cakes are finished. Check ‘em out!”

There they were, an array of nine beautiful cakes, including Pluto. The Mercury cake sported beautiful mottled blue frosting, Venus was decorated with fiery orange. Of course Earth was blue and green and Mars was red. The Jupiter cake was extra large and frosted in bands of cream, ocher, and brown, with a swirl representing the gigantic storm. On the eve of the Day of the Great Unraveling the cultists would each enjoy a slice of planet-themed cake, mimicking the Great Wyrm’s consumption of the solar system before he moved on to the dissolution of the rest of the universe. Bowls of chocolate rock candies were to be arranged as a representation of the asteroid belt.

“Great,” “Fantastic,” “Looks nice!” rose in chorus from the crowd. Chlorba-reek’s parents were also _super_ dedicated to the Order and every kid looking to go someplace in the ranks wanted to be on her good side.

Chlorba-reek nodded, accepting her due, and then her gaze snapped to Esme and Bettiana. “Are you two almost done? Esme, looks good. Bettiana, paper-mache with more reverent dedication!”

Titters wiggled into Bettiana’s ears. Hating Chlorba-reek and the Order of the Great Wyrm, she tried not to scowl too obviously.

“I’m paper-macheing with all the reverent dedication I can muster. Promise.”

-

Long night of preparations done, Bettiana picked away at trigonometry homework. Before joining the Order of the Great Wyrm, her dad had been a civil engineer; she remembered looking at blueprints that seemed totally inscrutable, enormous sheets of paper showcasing intricate designs of lines that would shape water mains and road grades, many numbers, curves, neatly laid out lists. Hard hats, neon orange safety vests, long hours. 

He was a dyed-in-the-wool cultist now but he still did some engineering work as a cult moneymaker and he wanted Bettiana to have a more “practical” education than she got in the cult. And she liked it. Each math problem enclosed the simple satisfaction of finishing a puzzle. Right answers crunched like potato chips. She turned her desk lamp on and worked late. Her dad came in around midnight and looked over her shoulder.

“Half angle formulas,” he said with a nostalgic tone. “Good times. Going to be up much longer, Wyrmling?”

“I wanna finish it.”

“No rush, no rush. The end of time will usher in the end of homework.” He squinted down at her and smiled amiably. He had thinning hair up top and more of a paunch now, and joining a doomsday cult seemed to have totally destressed him. “Big party tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Just marching in the Wyrm, dad.”

“I know. Looking forward to those cakes.”

She could not tell him or her mom how much she missed Christmas, public school, the normal cares of daily life. They’d take it hard. Bettiana sighed.

“I won’t stay up too late, dad.”

“That’s my girl.” He touched her lightly on the head and left.

-

The paper-mache skull face had turned out well after all. The blazing green cellophane eyes were a coup de grace and Esme enjoyed an accolade from Chlorba-reek for coming up with the idea.

Bettiana did not enjoy any accolades. She made her way to her place in the Wyrm’s body and ducked under the black sheet.

It was warm and dim. Bodies shuffled beside, in front, and behind her. Every kid in the cult ready to jump and prance in the name of the Great Wyrm. When the person in front moved Bettiana stepped after them, trying out a high skip just for color - the Wyrm could look energetic, like he just couldn’t wait to stomp some planets into pancakes.

They’d practiced at walking together under cover like this but actually doing it was weirder. Bettiana heard whoops from the older cultists and the little kids who’d just finished their summoning of the Great Wyrm skit. She tried to focus on not stepping on the heels of the person in front of her while also not bumping into the person next to her. It was going okay, and for a few disconnected seconds she felt like she wasn’t an isolated person but a section of the Wyrm after all, floating in vast space. Then she tripped over her own feet and fell hard enough to crack her head on the linoleum floor.

Drifting again, no direction, Bettiana’s body felt light. Then she fell heavily on a clinking, cold pile. She yelled and flailed and pushed herself up, eyes flying open.

Pillars thrust up around her, no ceiling to support. The sky was deep seaweed green, no stars. Gold coins shifted under her hands. A black tube shifted in front of her face. Bettiana reached out her hand and touched it: it was pebbly, cool.

She looked around. The black tube was all around.

Bettiana looked up. The long face of the Great Wyrm, identifiable because she’d just made a paper mache replica of it, and she’d seen it in paintings, hovered above her.

“Worshipper.”

“Ahhh!” Bettiana fell to her knees under that enormous head. Oh, God - oh, Wyrm? - the glowing green cellophane eyes had not prepared her for the real thing.

“Very good. Kneel and cower.” The point of the jaw touched her head, not hard. In the interest of self-preservation, Bettiana prostrated herself before the Great Wyrm.

“Yes, yes, very good,” the Great Wyrm rumbled after several seconds of this. “You may stand.”

Bettiana stayed prostrated for a good couple seconds longer, just to be sure, then sat up.

“I said you may stand.”

“Great Wyrm,” Bettiana said weakly. It was like the last time her dad had actually been mad at her, raised to the power of 10^10. “It’s uhh, I uhh, I don’t think the coins are stable. I think if I stand I might fall.”

Actually she felt like her legs would just buckle but that would be embarrassing to say, so she kept quiet.

The Great Wyrm looked at her. She'd seen a meme way back in the mists of time that dimly resembled his expression now, that of a super-skeptical Shiba Inu giving a side-eye.

“Very well, then. You may sit.”

“Thank you, Great Wyrm.”

“You disturb my dream, Worshipper. What provenance do you bear? What dread occasion drives you to perturb my rest?”

“... Are you dreaming about being asleep?” Bettiana asked. “The sacred texts say that your resting place looks a lot like this place.” It was possible she should be more terrified of her sight of the Infernal Being her cult followed, but she couldn’t help but be highly curious instead. It had been decades since the cult had opened the Way into the Lair of the Wyrm and it looked just like the illustrated manuscripts said.

The Great Wyrm looked around, as if he was only just seeing his domain. After a moment of aching silence, he said, “No.”

“I think I was just in the gymnasium. We’re doing a celebration for you, for the Day of the Great Unraveling. There’s cake.”

“Cake…”

“Nine cakes.”

“Well done, Worshipper. Nine cakes for my honor. But where is _my_ cake?”

“I think it’s all for you, in a… metaphorical sense. Because you haven’t manifested. So how could we give you cake?”

Did Wyrms like cake, or just want to be offered things? Could Wyrms eat cake? Would they enjoy cake? The Great Wyrm looked very reptilian. Bettiana didn’t know how reptiles processed taste, or if they’d enjoy sugary desserts, which seemed like a huge oversight all of a sudden - why didn’t the cult classes include reptilian biology?

“Hmm. Indeed, indeed. You have planned well nevertheless, Worshipper. Your offerings do not go unappreciated.”

“If you did manifest,” Bettiana said, feeling very much the infant ape-mammal she was, in comparison to this vast weight of years and general _large_ ness, “everyone would love it. I’m sure if you wanted you could have _all_ the cakes.”

“All the cakes…” A huge rush of wind passed over her, smelling like warm, wet stone. Bettiana realized the Great Wyrm had sighed. There was a shifting and clinking of coins as the Great Wyrm laid his head down near her. “Tell me more of your mortal business, Worshipper.”

“I don’t know, there’s not a lot to tell. We, uh, await your presence. We joyfully await the divine age of rot! We read auguries. You have many loyal worshippers? You should meet Chlorba-reek.”

“Your patience will be rewarded. The Day of Undoing is soon to come.” The blazing green eye slipped half-shut, opened wide again. “Have you come to me for a boon, Worshipper? You may ask.”

The Great Wyrm was on record assuring his cultists that _the Day of Undoing is soon to come_ two hundred years ago, on the occasion of the previous Opening of the Way. 

Bettiana got on her knees and performed a perfect genuflection on autopilot. “Great Wyrm, I’d like to go to college, outside the cult, to study quantum physics and maybe herpetology, in your honor.” 

She _definitely_ wanted to be the next one to try for an Opening of the Way, all of a sudden. This big dragon was a little silly and sleepy but in his presence she could really feel the infernal and the sublime.

“Granted. Leave me, Worshipper. Prepare cakes in my honor… and that ‘cereal’ you have, graven in my image… the one like a circle… keep making it.”

The Cheerios bullcrap was _true?_ Bettiana thought, as her view of the other world whirled around her and closed down to a luminous green point, and then dwindled to nothing.

-

“Bettiana? Bettiana!”

Something cold splattered her face. Bettiana licked her lips - water, someone was splashing water on her. Her father was asking for her. She opened her eyes to his lined, concerned face.

“Dad?”

“You hit your head and blacked out for a few seconds. My darling! Did your shoe come untied?”

“No! I’m not a kid. I had a vision of the Great Wyrm, dad.”

“A vision?” His eyes widened, he called out to the other cultists clustered around her. “She had a vision of the Wyrm!”

“Are you sure?” That was Chlorba-reek’s dad, Gack-blecht. She recognized the snobby tone. “I think she just fainted, Lurn-blark. Put her in the nurse’s office and let’s carry on with things.”

“No, it was a vision of the Wyrm,” Bettiana insisted, as her father helped her to her feet and ushered her towards the entrance to the offices and smaller rooms built off the gymnasium. “I saw him. He’s pleased with the cakes!”

Gack-blecht ignored her. She could hear him shouting at the wyrm-actors to start snaking around and dancing again.

“I won’t leave you alone,” her dad assured her, when she was settled on a cot in the nurse’s office. It was dark and smelled like old carpet in there. Bettiana stared at the ceiling. She didn’t feel at all like resting.

“Thanks, dad, but do you think you could go get pieces of cake for us before they’re all gone?”

With dadly hesitation: “You sure, pumpkin?”

“Yeah. I’m totally fine.”

"Which planet do you want?"

"Jupiter."

“Jupiter it is. In a minute.”

That was all right. Bettiana closed her eyes, pulling up the image of the demesne of the Wyrm. All those golden coins, that strange green sky. The place was a world of its own.

She was going to college. The Wyrm had blessed it, and she’d make it happen. Herpetology and quantum physics for aide in portal-opening and cakes for reptile overlords were in the near future: desire, freshly kindled, burned in her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the adorable short [horror-comedy comic](https://twitter.com/_pocketss/status/1295131446361952261) by pocketss.


End file.
